quickwit-oss / quickwit-oss/quickwit
Leading-`-` / bool.must_not matches documents where the field is absent
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Description
Summary
Quickwit's leading-- operator (and bool.must_not) matches every document where the inner clause evaluates false, including documents that don't contain the field at all. This differs from both SQL WHERE NOT x = 'foo' (which excludes NULLs) and Elasticsearch must_not (which excludes missing-field docs).
Repro
Index two docs: {"vendor": "aws"} and {} (no vendor field).
curl -sS "$QW/api/v1/<index>/search?query=-vendor:aws"
# → returns BOTH docs.
# Elasticsearch must_not on the same data returns only the {} doc.
# SQL `WHERE vendor <> 'aws'` returns NEITHER (NULLs excluded).
Expected behavior
Either align - / must_not with SQL+ES semantics (field != value AND field exists), or expose a separate operator with that semantic (field:!value, must_not_exists, etc.) and document the distinction.
Why this matters
Every "does not equal" predicate in a user-facing query layer has to be wrapped in an explicit existence guard (field:[* TO *] AND -field:value) to get expected behavior. The existence guard itself is fragile because the right "exists" syntax varies by field type (see related: field:* silently zero when index_field_presence: false).
Version
Observed on 0.8.x.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
No implementation files or tests are named. Start by tracing the query parser and evaluator paths for leading - and bool.must_not, then reproduce the two-document case; done means the chosen missing-field semantics are covered by a regression test and documented.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- search
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 48/100